RELUCTANT REBEL.

• Author: Speizer, Irwin
• Position: Ken Thompson of First Union Corp.

Loyalty is a trait that took Ken Thompson to the top. Now he bucks tradition to get his bank back up there.

Nearly an hour and a half go by before Ken Thompson shows the first sign of stress. The topic: Charlotte-based First Union Corp.'s generous dividend -- despite Wall Street pressure to lower it. Up to now, he's answered every question in a far-ranging interview about his background, how the bank stumbled and his decision to take a $2.8 billion restructuring charge to overhaul it. But when it comes to the dividend, he deftly defers. "I would just say that it was debated at our board. But at the end of the day, we've got plenty of capacity to generate all of the capital we need in this company. At the end of the day, we didn't need to cut the dividend."

Where Thompson, the new president and CEO, really stands remains a mystery, which is where he wants to keep it. The bank that in three decades clambered from North Carolina's second tier to the nation's sixth-largest, with $285 billion in assets, slipped on its success, missing earnings targets, shedding thousands of jobs, stung by analysts saying mergers had soured, by customers complaining its service was shoddy. The dividend had emerged as a defining issue, Wall Street wondering whether Chairman Ed Crutchfield, who ceded the CEO title to Thompson after being diagnosed with cancer, still rules.

But by casting Crutchfield vs. Thompson as the First Union story, the Street may be missing the big picture, which is where Thompson has already taken the company -- streamlining it, refocusing it, demanding better customer service. As for Crutchfield, Thompson owes his career to the man who built the bank into what it is today. Crutchfield moved him along, testing him with challenging assignments for two decades that culminating in naming him, after John Georgious left last year, president and CEO.

Whatever the disputes over the dividend, Thompson figures he can work around them. He knows he doesn't have much time. First Union's missteps have made it potential takeover prey. "They have 18 months to deliver 12 to 15% revenue growth, profit growth," says Tony Plath, banking professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

So who is this guy in the hot seat. How did he get there? For starters, he's likeable, the sort who prides himself as being approachable. Engaging rather than charismatic, he stands 5-8, with straight brown hair, wire-rims and a prominent, deep-dimpled chin. He listens rather than lectures, oozing empathy and calm. A deft salesman and handler of customers and employees, around First Union he's known as someone who gets the job done.

Mike Easley -- state attorney general and Democratic candidate for governor -- grew up with Thompson in Rocky Mount. Never flashy, always reliable is how he describes him -- "the type guy that you would always have been comfortable to have in the foxhole with you if you were in trouble. In sports, if you needed to get the job done, you knew he was the guy you could throw the pass to and he wouldn't drop it. If I was in a little trouble in this office and I needed a go-to guy, Ken Thompson is the one I would call down to say, 'I need this taken care of.'"

Page Lea, a longtime friend who is chairman of Wynd Communications Corp., a wireless Internet-access business he recently started in Virginia Beach, recalls playing golf with him, spending the round talking about his own career. The announcement came down the next day. "I think he knew he was about to be named president. But he didn't even mention it. He was more interested in what I was doing than telling me about what he was doing."

Avid reader and history buff, he took a two-volume biography of Winston Churchill on his honeymoon -- and finished a good part of it. In his own life, he might have more in common with Mikhail Gorbachev. A lifelong party apparatchik, the Soviet premier was conservative and loyal enough to advance through the hierarchy until his moment arrived. Steadfastly loyal, Thompson moved where Crutchfield sent him, succeeding at each assignment, finally inheriting a troubled regime. Gorbachev ordered market reforms and glasnost -- openness -- as an antidote to Cold War tensions and his nation's mounting economic problems. Thompson ordered a restructuring of First Union and declared a new era of "transparency" to thaw relations with Wall Street analysts.

Gorbachev's reforms, of course, were his ultimate undoing. Thompson's challenge as CEO is to keep both the old guard at First Union and the profit-hungry investment world of Wall Street happy. Wall Street, while impressed with his initial restructuring, is not sold yet. "Obviously there is some decisive action that has come out, which certainly says a lot about...